My children, gather close and listen well
You know I have seen many seasons come and go.
Rainy season, dry season, war season, harvest season,
but now there is a strange season in our land.
It is the season of the Big Brother
Ten harvests have passed since it first came,
and every year it comes like a market day
where the sellers display not farm produce,
but the nakedness of their bodies and the noise of their loquacious tongues.
They call it “entertainment.”
But my people,
if a dance makes the ancestors turn their faces away,
should that dance be done in the village square?
When I was young,
we learnt that the road to honour was long,
and the load of success was carried with sweat and patience.
But now, our sons believe
that the road to riches is short and wide,
paved with quarrels, shamelessness, and the opening of legs.
Our daughters think
that respect can be thrown away
like the peel of an orange,
as long as the world is watching.
Ah! This is not the Nigeria we dreamt of.
Look around you:
our schools are like broken calabashes that hold no water.
Our hospitals are places where the living go
and the dead return.
Our youths wander like goats that have lost the shepherd,
but we pour millions into feeding this Big Brother house
Money that could mend the roof of a leaking classroom,
money that could buy tools for a farmer’s hands,
money that could fill the pot in a hungry home,
instead, it buys glamour for a show
that teaches the young to prize wealth without work.
Tell me, my people,
will a tree grow straight if its young shoot is bent?
What fruit will come from a farm
where weeds are carefully watered every day?
Big Brother Naija fills young minds
with a hunger for quick fame,
but fame that grows overnight is like yam without roots,
one wind will topple it.
I am not saying let there be no laughter in the land.
I am saying: let our laughter
be like the palm wine after a day’s labour —
sweet, earned, and shared with dignity.
Let us put stories before the youth
that sharpen their minds like the blacksmith’s blade,
that remind them of the strength of their grandfathers,
and the virtue of their grandmothers.
Ten seasons we have danced to this noisy drum,
but the song has brought no harvest.
It has only brought dust into the nostrils of our children.
Perhaps it is time to break the drumstick,
to let silence fall long enough
for us to remember who we are.
For a nation is like a garden:
plant okra, you will pluck okra;
plant shame, you will harvest disgrace.
The earth does not lie.
My people,
the choice of seed is in our hands.
EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO - writes from Ayakoromo Town Delta State
08134853570
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